More on Growing Food in the Basement in Winter

A friend and colleague of mine asked today about how he could start growing spinach in his basement in winter.  I've never grown spinach in the winter, as mentioned earlier only lettuce and arugula, but this is for you Scott...a primer on growing winter greens in the basement.

First, my basement is not heated.  This is important because if it's heated like the rest of the house I think it would be more difficult to grow those cool weather crops like spinach, lettuce and arugula.  Second, I have a separate room that is dedicated as my grow room - it has a table for potting and repotting, a re-purposed night stand for seed catalogs, gardening journals, etc., a rod on which to hang herbs and garlic, and most importantly my grow light stands.  I have two of them - one is a two tiered stand and one is a three tiered stand.  In the winter it is usually only two of the shelves that are being used, but all 5 will be in use by the time we're ready for spring planting.  As I mentioned before, you can start your winter basement garden far more cheaply by simply buying a shop light and replacing standard fluorescent bulbs with grow bulbs.  Start small and cheap unless you know you are committed to serious growing.

Here is a photo of my grow room, the three shelf grow light is on the wall to the left of the photo and thus not shown.  Notice it has decorations and a place to sit - if you have a room to dedicate to growing, planting and food storage you should make it comfortable, so you want to spend time there!

Once you have your planting space, get your seeds and a good organic seed starting mix.  I use the seed starting mix from Gardener's Supply but that's just my personal choice.  You should start seeds in little bitty pots - I used to use recycled yogurt containers with holes punched in the bottom, but broke down and got seed starter flats (it saves space).  I cut them into sections to make them easier to work with and I wash and re-use these every year.  Here's a picture to give you an idea.  Plant according to the instructions - usually the seeds are covered with 1/8 - 1/4 inch of soil, and I usually put in 2-5 seeds per pot/cell depending on viability of the seed.

After you have the seeds in the soil, just put them in the tray (the shelves are actually trays in my set-up but if you make your own shelf, the seed starting flats come with trays) and spritz them with water to moisten the top of the soil.  Then put water in the tray.  I water from the bottom rather than the top because I found it didn't make any difference in the growth of the plants (I experimented) and it's WAY easier!  All you have to do is water the tray and all the plants in the tray get watered, far faster than watering each plant.  The plants need about 14 - 16 hours of light a day, so make it a routine to turn them on when you get up in the morning and turn them off when you go to bed at night.

Once you have sprouts thin them so you have one plant per cell/tiny pot.  Sometimes I miss one and end up with 2 in a cell...it's not the end of the world, but if you don't thin you won't have nice size plants later.  After the plants have grown just a bit more (give them a chance to get over the loss of their siblings and get their "true" leaves) transplant them to larger pots.  I recycle pots that I get from friends.  Again, one or two plants per pot, unless it's a really large pot.  Here is an example: this is baby arugula in different size pots.  You can see that some are single plants, but in the larger pot I put 3...there seemed to be enough room.

That's all there is to it!  It's extremely easy.

One last thing - when I cut the leaves I always thank the plants that are giving me the food.  (I also wish them good morning and good night - but that's just because I'm weird.)  :-)  Happy gardening and good luck!